Al-Qaeda chief accuses US of Egypt 'plotting'

Zawahri says the US helped the military, secularists and Christians to overthrow deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

03 Aug 2013 03:06 GMT

Zawahri said the Muslim Brotherhood was soft on Islamic law [Al Jazeera]

The al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has accused the United States of "plotting" with Egypt's military, secularists and Christians to overthrow Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, in an audio recording posted on militant Islamist forums.

In his first public comments on the July 3 military coup, the Al-Qaeda boss, himself an Egyptian, said: "Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged ... with Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi's government."

In the 15-minute recording, Zawahiri also accused Egypt's Coptic Christian minority of supporting the Islamist president's toppling to attain "a Coptic state stripped from Egypt's south".

He attacked the interim vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei, as an "envoy of American providence".